Claims

Students from middle school through university frequently offer empirical justifications on proof tasks, though empirical arguments become rare among advanced mathematics majors

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2013 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q2 i? The review reports that middle school students provided empirical justifications 36% to 81% of the time depending on task, secondary students 34-43% of the time, and first-year university students roughly 40% of the time. → Keith Weber 2013

Evidence

Keith Weber 2013

Keith Weber, Matthew Inglis & Juan Pablo Mejia-Ramos. (2013). How mathematicians obtain conviction: Implications for mathematics instruction and research on epistemic cognition. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2013.865527

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports this study, citing Knuth, Choppin, and Bieda: approximately 400 middle school children completed six justification tasks and gave empirical justifications 36% to 81% of the time. The review attributes the Healy and Hoyles and Recio and Godino rates similarly; the reviewed designs are not described beyond this.

"Knuth, Choppin, and Bieda (2009) presented approximately 400 middle school children with six justification tasks in number theory and found that students provided empirical justifications (i.e., they checked that these assertions were true for specific examples) 36% to 81% of the time, depending upon the task."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id students-frequent-empirical-justifications
title Students from middle school through university frequently offer empirical justifications on proof tasks, though empirical arguments become rare among advanced mathematics majors
description Students from middle school through university frequently offer empirical justifications on proof tasks, though empirical arguments become rare among advanced mathematics majors
status review
evidence_strength weak
newest_evidence 2013
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-22
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — keith-weber-2013

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